


we all fall down

by ghvsts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gratuitous use of italics, M/M, Post Infinity War, bruce/nat is so background you blink you'll miss it tbh, im in mourning everyone is in mourning, major character death warning bc its IW obviously, pretty much everyone is mentioned?? but briefly, speaking of IW man that movie messed me up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 09:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14469318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghvsts/pseuds/ghvsts
Summary: maybe it's that there's nothing left to bury.





	we all fall down

**Author's Note:**

> again, this is post-infinity war. so like, spoiler warning. 
> 
> this has been stuck in my head since i saw it thursday so here you go

Maybe it’s that there’s nothing left to bury. 

 

Maybe that’s why he’s been so stubborn and full of denial and— it’s not like Steve hasn’t seen death before. He fought in a goddamn war with 80 million casualties. Death has always hung over him, it’s always been there, at his shoulder, leering. It laughed at him when he plunged himself into the ice, his last words cut-off by the crash, and he woke up seventy years later with everyone gone.  

 

He knew they weren’t going to make it out of this. Not all them. So maybe he’s been preparing for this for years now.  But maybe that preparation was useless because he wasn’t expecting it to be so much like _last time._  

 

 _Last time,_ there wasn’t anything left to bury. All he had was a job to do and a train speeding away from Bucky as he fell, screaming, and Steve had to watch and couldn’t do anything. _Last time_ , he got a letter from his higher-ups, telling him Bucky died for a cause, and they all got a museum exhibit and Bucky got to be the _only Howling Commando to die in combat_.

 

 _This time_ , Thanos disappears and then there’s a horrible silence and then he hears  a _“Steve?”_ and he turns and it’s just like last time. Except there’s no screaming, but he stills watch Bucky fall. Watches him crumble and disappear and there’s nothing left to bury. And then he has to watch the rest of them fall, turn to dust, and they _lost_. 

 

 _Last time,_ Bucky disappeared and there was no body and then he came back, brainwashed and on the wrong side, but he was back. 

 _This time,_ Bucky disappears and T’Challa disappears and Wanda disappears and Sam is gone and Tony is missing and no one knows where the rest of them are. 

 

Last time Bucky didn’t die and so maybe that’s why Steve refuses to believe it this time. 

 

Everyone gathers together. Okoye crushes Shuri in a hug and Steve thinks he hears screaming and it might be him but really, it could be anyone. They lost half the universe today. 

 

Natasha is the most reserved. She stands behind Steve and watches them as they mourn and try not to fall to pieces like their friends just did.  Bruce stands next to her quietly. Thor carries Vision’s body, grey and broken, in.  Rocket, _Rabbit_ , Thor calls him, does not come in with the rest of them. He stays in the woods and Steve knows what it feels like to be so completely out of place and element (except Rocket is from space, apparently, and that’s a little different than waking up in the 21st century when last you checked it was the 1940s). 

 

Rhodey calls Tony. And calls him again. And calls him again. And throws his phone against a wall when there’s no signal, no answer, nothing. It shatters, and Steve’s heart is doing the same.

 

Steve can’t believe this has happened. Failure has never been an option and he refuses to believe that it was still the outcome. Half the universe can’t have died. Thanos can’t have gotten all the stones. Bucky can’t have died, not when Steve just got him back, tired and broken but finally whole and healed and _back._ It’s so unfair. A voice in the back of his mind breaks through the fog that’s covered him since everything went to shit and tells him life has never been fair. 

 

He should have expected this. He had expected this. But not like _this._  

 

 

*******

 

For the first couple days, there is complete silence from the outside world. Bruce and Natasha rarely leave each other’s sides. Shuri slowly starts with the plans to rebuild Wakanda. She doesn’t speak of anything but how she’ll reinforce their defences. _This will never happen again,_ she swears. Reports begin to come through. The population has halved. Funerals are happening on mass, but they lower empty coffins. Rhodey mentions a burial of their own, a service to commemorate their fallen— once. Steve shoots him a look so full and pain and ice that he drops it immediately. Steve will not watch a priest bless an bodiless grave. Not again. Never again. Not when there’s still a chance he could come back— Steve tries not to let his brain go down that path. It does anyway. It only makes it worse. 

 

Thor never lets his axe leave his side. He carries it with him wherever he goes, sleeps with it in his hand. He mourns his brother and his people, all the Asgardians slaughtered by Thanos to protect the Tesseract, only for him to get it. Rocket runs his paws along the wooden handle attached to the axehead and Groot is the only one with something left to burry but they can’t burry the axe. Even Rocket admits to this.

 

Steve carries Bucky’s gun with him. He vows to destroy Thanos. He doesn’t know how they’ll do it, especially with Wanda gone. He doesn’t know how you defeat the most powerful being in the universe with all the stones on his side, but Steve vows to do it regardless. 

 

 

*******

 

Steve tries not to resent Vision and Wanda. He knows he shouldn’t resent the dead, can’t blame them for running away like they did. But he does. Because he wishes it could have been him and Buck. He wants nothing more than a break from the constant _pain._ He wants nothing more than for Bucky to walk through that door and steal him away, and maybe they’d go back to Europe. Go to all the cities they never got to see. Maybe they’d even revisit cities they last saw bombed and war-torn, with skeleton buildings and streets. He wants to find Bucky and run away from here. He wants to disappear off the grid, for good this time. They’d reminisce and make up for all the time they’ve lost. They’ve lost so much time. So much time to ice and war and they could have had the last _seventy years_. 

 

Steve tries not to resent the serum. He knows he’s saved a lot of people, even given others hope. But he does. Because he wishes he and Buck had been able to grow old together. And now that’ll never happen, and Bucky is— 

 

*******

 

They’re all—

 

*******

 

 

Steve wishes he was—

 

*******

 

 

He doesn’t know what to do next. He doesn’t know where Thanos is. He doesn’t know how to handle this.

 

 

*******

 

 

So Steve does the only thing he knows how to do. He asks Shuri to make him a shield. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sad & this is a rambling mess :(
> 
> comments/kudos are much appreciated i'll owe u my life  
> (didn't??? edit this?? so if you see a mistake pls lemme me know)


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